The wiki · page 8 of 25

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06 — Hosting & Domains

What Is an A Record?

An A record (Address record) is a DNS entry that maps a domain or subdomain to an IPv4 address, telling the internet which server hosts the website for that name. When someone visits your domain, DNS uses the A record to convert the human-friendly name into the numeric IP address a browser needs to connect. It is one of the most fundamental DNS records; without a correct A record, a domain cannot point visitors to a website.

UPDATED 2026-07-09 · READ →

What Is a CNAME Record?

A CNAME (Canonical Name) record is a DNS entry that points one domain name to another name rather than to an IP address, creating an alias. When a name has a CNAME, DNS follows it to the target name and then resolves that target's address. CNAMEs are commonly used to point subdomains like www or shop at a primary domain or a third-party service, so the underlying IP can change without editing your own records.

UPDATED 2026-07-09 · READ →

What Is an MX Record?

An MX (Mail Exchange) record is a DNS entry that specifies which mail servers are responsible for receiving email for a domain, and in what priority order. When someone sends a message to an address at your domain, the sending server looks up your MX records to know where to deliver it. Without correct MX records, incoming email cannot reach your inbox, making them essential for any business that uses email at its own domain.

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What Is a TXT Record?

A TXT record is a flexible DNS entry that stores arbitrary text associated with a domain, most often used to verify domain ownership and to hold email authentication settings like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Because it can contain almost any text, services rely on TXT records to publish machine-readable information tied to a domain. For businesses, TXT records are essential for proving ownership to third-party tools and for keeping outgoing email trusted and out of spam folders.

UPDATED 2026-07-09 · READ →

What Is DNS Propagation?

DNS propagation is the delay between changing a DNS record and that change taking effect everywhere on the internet, as servers and devices worldwide update their cached copies. Because resolvers store DNS answers for a set time (the TTL) to speed up browsing, an update can take from a few minutes to around 48 hours to be seen by everyone. During propagation, some visitors see the new setting while others still see the old, which is why DNS changes are not instant.

UPDATED 2026-07-09 · READ →

What Is Website Uptime?

Website uptime is the percentage of time a website is online, reachable, and functioning normally, as opposed to downtime when it is unavailable. It is usually expressed as a percentage over a period, such as 99.9% uptime per month, and is a core measure of hosting reliability. High uptime matters because every minute a site is down can cost a business lost customers, sales, and search visibility, making it a key factor when choosing hosting and monitoring a website.

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What Is Bandwidth?

Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data a website or network connection can transfer in a given period, usually measured per second or totaled per month. In web hosting, it describes how much traffic your site can serve before hitting a limit or slowing down. A busy local business site with many images or videos consumes more bandwidth than a simple text page, so hosting plans size their monthly allowance accordingly.

UPDATED 2026-07-09 · READ →

TLS vs SSL: What's the Difference?

TLS (Transport Layer Security) is the modern encryption protocol that secures data traveling between a browser and a website, and it is the direct successor to the older, now-deprecated SSL (Secure Sockets Layer). The two names are used interchangeably in everyday speech, so people still say SSL certificate even though every secure site today actually runs on TLS. The distinction matters mainly for accuracy and security: real SSL versions are obsolete and unsafe, while current TLS versions protect your visitors.

UPDATED 2026-07-09 · READ →

What Is an HTTPS Redirect?

An HTTPS redirect automatically sends any visitor who arrives at the insecure HTTP version of your website to the secure HTTPS version instead. It is typically a server rule, most often a 301 permanent redirect, that rewrites http:// links to https:// so no one ever loads an unencrypted page. This guarantees every visit is protected by TLS encryption, preserves SEO value by consolidating both versions into one, and prevents browsers from showing Not Secure warnings.

UPDATED 2026-07-09 · READ →

What Is a Wildcard SSL Certificate?

A wildcard SSL certificate secures a domain and all of its first-level subdomains with a single certificate, using an asterisk in place of the subdomain name, such as *.example.com. That one certificate covers www.example.com, shop.example.com, blog.example.com, and any other subdomain at the same level. It saves the cost and hassle of buying and managing a separate certificate for each subdomain, making it ideal for businesses running several subdomains under one main domain.

UPDATED 2026-07-09 · READ →

What Is Domain Privacy (WHOIS Protection)?

Domain privacy, also called WHOIS protection or private registration, is a service that hides your personal contact details from the public WHOIS database when you register a domain. Instead of showing your name, home address, phone number, and email, the registrar substitutes proxy or forwarding information. This shields you from spam, scams, identity theft, and unwanted solicitations while keeping your domain fully registered in your name. Many registrars now include it free, and it is a sensible default for most businesses.

UPDATED 2026-07-09 · READ →

What Is a Domain Transfer?

A domain transfer is the process of moving a domain name's registration from one registrar to another while keeping the same domain and ownership. It typically requires unlocking the domain, obtaining an authorization code (EPP or auth code), and approving the transfer, after which the new registrar takes over renewals and management. Transfers are governed by ICANN rules, usually take a few days, and do not by themselves move your website or email, only the registration.

UPDATED 2026-07-09 · READ →

Domain vs Hosting: What's the Difference?

A domain and hosting are two separate services every website needs. The domain is your address, the name people type such as example.com, leased yearly from a registrar. Hosting is the server space where your site's files actually live and get delivered to visitors. The two are connected by DNS records that point the domain at the host's server. Neither works alone: a domain with no hosting points nowhere, and hosting with no domain has no memorable address people can find.

UPDATED 2026-07-10 · READ →

Domain vs URL: What's the Difference?

A domain is the core name of a website, such as example.com, while a URL is the complete web address that includes the domain plus everything needed to reach one specific page. Every URL contains a domain, but a URL also adds the protocol, an optional subdomain, the path, and sometimes a query string and anchor. Put simply, the domain names the whole site and the URL locates an exact page or resource within it, so every page shares one domain but has its own unique URL.

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Domain vs Subdomain: What's the Difference?

A domain is your main website address, like example.com, which you register and own through a registrar. A subdomain is a prefix added in front of that domain, like blog.example.com or shop.example.com, created for free within a domain you already control. You register and pay for the root domain once a year; you can then create unlimited subdomains at no extra cost by adding DNS records. Subdomains let you organize distinct sections, apps, or platforms under one brand without buying additional domain names.

UPDATED 2026-07-10 · READ →

IPv4 vs IPv6: What's the Difference?

IPv4 and IPv6 are two versions of the internet's addressing system, the numbers that identify every device online. IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses written like 203.0.113.10, allowing about 4.3 billion unique addresses, which the internet has run out of. IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses written like 2001:db8::1, providing a practically unlimited supply. Both still run side by side today, and most modern networks support both, so websites and devices work whether they use IPv4, IPv6, or both.

UPDATED 2026-07-10 · READ →

What Is Managed WordPress Hosting?

Managed WordPress hosting is a hosting service optimized specifically for WordPress, where the provider handles technical maintenance for you: automatic core updates, daily backups, server-level caching, security hardening, staging environments, and WordPress-savvy support. Unlike generic shared hosting, the environment is tuned for WordPress performance and comes with guardrails that reduce breakage. It typically costs more than basic shared hosting but less than a fully managed server, and it suits businesses that want a fast, secure site without managing servers.

UPDATED 2026-07-10 · READ →

What Is a DNS Error?

A DNS error is a failure in the process that translates a human-friendly domain name, like example.com, into the numerical IP address a browser needs to load a website. When name resolution breaks, the browser cannot find the server, so the page will not load even when the site is healthy. Common causes include misconfigured or missing DNS records, an expired domain, nameserver problems, propagation delays, or a local device issue. Because DNS is the internet's address book, a DNS error usually means the address lookup failed, not the destination.

UPDATED 2026-07-10 · READ →

What Is a 522 Connection Timed Out Error?

A 522 Connection Timed Out error is a Cloudflare status code shown when Cloudflare can reach your domain but cannot get a timely response from your origin server. Cloudflare sits in front of your site as a proxy; when it forwards a request and your host does not complete the TCP connection within the time limit, Cloudflare returns 522. It signals the problem is at your server or network, not at Cloudflare. Common causes include an overloaded or crashed server, a firewall blocking Cloudflare's IPs, or wrong DNS records.

UPDATED 2026-07-10 · READ →

What Is Website Downtime?

Website downtime is any period when your website is unavailable or not functioning for visitors, whether it shows an error, fails to load, or times out. It is the opposite of uptime, the percentage of time a site is reachable. Downtime can stem from server crashes, hosting outages, expired domains, traffic spikes, failed deployments, DDoS attacks, or expired SSL certificates. For a business, downtime means lost sales, missed leads, damaged trust, and weaker search signals, which is why uptime is a core measure of hosting quality.

UPDATED 2026-07-10 · READ →

07 — Technical SEO

Sitemaps & robots.txt: What They Do and Why They Matter

An XML sitemap and a robots.txt file are the two standard ways your website talks to search engine crawlers. The sitemap is a machine-readable list of the URLs you want discovered and indexed, with optional last-modified dates. The robots.txt file, served at yourdomain.com/robots.txt, tells crawlers which parts of the site not to crawl. Neither one forces indexing or guarantees privacy — they are instructions to well-behaved bots, and they matter most for discovery, crawl efficiency, and avoiding self-inflicted SEO damage.

UPDATED 2026-07-09 · READ →

What Is Crawl Budget?

Crawl budget is the number of pages a search engine like Google is willing and able to crawl on your site within a given period. It is shaped by crawl capacity, how much crawling your server can handle without slowing down, and crawl demand, how much Google wants to crawl your site based on its size, popularity, and freshness. For most small local business sites crawl budget is not a concern, but for large sites it determines how quickly pages get discovered and updated.

UPDATED 2026-07-09 · READ →

What Is a Canonical Tag?

A canonical tag is a snippet of HTML that tells search engines which version of a page is the preferred, master copy when the same or very similar content exists at multiple URLs. Placed in the page's head as a link element with rel=canonical, it consolidates ranking signals onto one chosen URL and prevents duplicate content from splitting them. Canonical tags are a key technical SEO tool for managing duplicates from parameters, HTTP versus HTTPS, trailing slashes, and syndicated content.

UPDATED 2026-07-09 · READ →

What Is Indexing in Google?

Indexing in Google is the process of analyzing a crawled web page and storing it in Google's index, the massive database of pages eligible to appear in search results. After Googlebot crawls a page, Google renders it, interprets its content and signals, and decides whether to include it. Only indexed pages can rank. If a page is not indexed, it simply cannot appear in Google Search, making indexing a prerequisite for any visibility.

UPDATED 2026-07-09 · READ →

What Is a Noindex Tag?

A noindex tag is an instruction that tells search engines not to include a specific page in their search results. It is added as a meta robots tag in a page's HTML head or sent as an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header. A noindexed page can still be crawled and its links followed, but it will not appear in Google or Bing listings. It is the correct tool for thank-you pages, thin filter URLs, and internal admin screens.

UPDATED 2026-07-09 · READ →

What Is a 301 Redirect?

A 301 redirect is a permanent HTTP status code that tells browsers and search engines a page has moved for good to a new URL. When a visitor or crawler requests the old address, the server responds with a 301 and forwards them to the new one. Search engines transfer nearly all ranking signals to the destination and eventually replace the old URL with the new one in their index. It is the standard, SEO-safe way to move or consolidate pages.

UPDATED 2026-07-09 · READ →

What Is a 302 Redirect?

A 302 redirect is an HTTP status code that tells browsers and search engines a page has moved temporarily to another URL. Unlike a permanent 301, a 302 signals that the original address will return, so search engines keep the old URL in their index rather than transferring ranking signals to the new one. It is the correct choice for short-lived moves like A/B tests, temporary promotions, or maintenance pages, and the wrong choice for permanent URL changes.

UPDATED 2026-07-09 · READ →

What Is a Redirect Chain?

A redirect chain occurs when a URL redirects to another URL, which then redirects again, forcing browsers and crawlers through multiple hops before reaching the final page. For example, URL A points to B, which points to C. Each extra hop adds latency, wastes crawl budget, and can dilute the ranking signals passed along. Chains usually accumulate over time as sites change, and the fix is to point every redirect directly at the final destination.

UPDATED 2026-07-09 · READ →

What Are Meta Robots Tags?

Meta robots tags are HTML instructions placed in a page's head that tell search engine crawlers how to index the page and handle its links. Common directives include index or noindex, which control whether the page appears in results, and follow or nofollow, which control whether links on the page pass signals. They give page-level control over crawling behavior and can also be delivered as an X-Robots-Tag HTTP header for non-HTML files.

UPDATED 2026-07-09 · READ →

What Is a Hreflang Tag?

A hreflang tag is an HTML attribute that tells search engines which language and regional version of a page to show users based on their language and location. It maps equivalent pages to language and country codes, so a searcher in Spain sees the Spanish page and one in Mexico sees the Mexican Spanish version. Hreflang prevents wrong-language results and reduces duplicate content problems across international or multilingual sites, and it must be reciprocal to work.

UPDATED 2026-07-09 · READ →

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